You buy twenty 7.62 mm cartridges and it’s $.80 each, but what did these swindlers pay for big lots? Botach would find some ammo dump in Bulgaria and pay $50,000 for a lot. I am sure many $50,000 payments were made by a sweaty middleman, with $38,000 in cash, saying ‚This is all Botach could raise.‘

A safe bet was this Zio-Garbage paid $20 million total, and sold it to the Defense Department for $300 million.

The Slug Who Is Allegedly Behind It

Yoav Botach, an 79 yr-old Israeli, living in Beverly Hills. According to court records, Botach co-owns 144 commercial and other properties in Los Angeles, as well as Botach Tactical, a nationwide distributor of police and military equipment. Botach’s net worth is $700 million.“

Shmuley Boteach Is The Son

Shmuley writes racy ‚Orthodox Jewish sex books‘. He was involved with Michael Jackson and an „infamous“ charity in 2000 called Time for Kids where the money went missing.

Rabbi Kalman Packouz

The Vice-President of AEY, the Florida firm, is 25-year-old licensed masseuse David M. Packouz, the son of Rabbi Kalman Packouz. The rabbi is another author of marital book, and writes a love-lorn column

Defense contractor AEY was never certified as a disadvantaged business for the purposes of government contracting, Elizabeth Newell and Robert Brodsky reported in yesterday’s edition of Government Executive:

„They are not an SDB,“ an official from the South Florida office said. „They are not 8(a) or anything like that. They are just a firm that is listed in [the Central Contractor Registry] for purposes of being able to secure contracts.“http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise…dealer-aey.html

House sleuth Henry Waxman (D-CA) read the news today, oh boy. And he wants 22 year-old AEY President Efraim Diveroli, his 25 year-old VP (and masseur) David Packouz, and the company’s general manager, also 25, to testify before Congress about how they managed to get a $300 million U.S. contract to supply (sometimes forty year-old) ammunition to the Afghan Army, among other contracts. Waxman also wants officials from the Department of Defense and Department of State to appear as well. He’s set the date of April 17th.

Wait, lets re-read this.The president of this multi million dollar company is 22 years old, Mr. Efraim Diveroli. The Vice President, whose qualification is as a masseuse, Mr. David Packouz, is 25 years old.

Oh and here is the 22 year old, Mr. Efraim Diveroli’s, MySpace page (no, again, I am NOT kidding you!).

On the myspace page, the multi millionare describes himself thusly in the section About Me:

Well of course im a super nice guy!!! , i know what i want out of life but not exactly quite sure how to get it yet……..

Again, let us sum up- a 22 year old Efraim Diveroli together with a 25 year old „massage expert“ David Packouz get $300 million and the know how to send old ammunition to the Afghan army to fulfill a United States Government contract?

Of course the uncle, his arms dealer father set the deal up with whomever was corrupt enough in the US government to supply our allies in Afghanistan with 40 year old (illegal to trade in USA) Chinese ammunition.

MIAMI-DADE CORRECTIONS
Efraim Diveroli has been charged with violating the Arms Export Control Act.A 22-year-old munitions dealer and others in his Miami Beach company were arrested on charges of selling prohibited Chinese weaponry to the U.S. government to supply allied forces in Afghanistan, according to law enforcement officials.

Efraim Diveroli, president of AEY Inc., and three other employees were arrested Thursday night and Friday morning — accused of conspiring to misrepresent the types of munitions they sold to the U.S. Department of Defense as part of a $300 million Army weapons contract, officials said.

……….
In 2004, AEY listed Efraim Diveroli, then 18, as an officer with a 1 percent ownership stake.

The younger Diverolis munitions experience appeared to be limited to a short-lived job in Los Angeles for Botach Tactical, a military and police supply company owned by his uncle, Bar-Kochba Botach.

It won a $126,000 award for ammunition for the Special Forces; AEY also provided ammunition or equipment in 2004 to the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Transportation Security Administration and the State Department.

By 2005, when Diveroli became AEYs president at age 19, the company was bidding across a spectrum of government agencies and providing paramilitary equipment  weapons, helmets, ballistic vests, bomb suits, batteries and chargers for X-ray machines  for American aid to Pakistan, Bolivia and elsewhere.

It was also providing supplies to the U.S. military in Iraq, where its business included a $5.7 million contract for rifles for Iraqi forces.

Two federal officials involved in contracting in Baghdad said AEY quickly developed a bad reputation. They werent reliable, or if they did come through, they did after many excuses, said one of them, who asked that his name be withheld because he was not authorized to speak with reporters.

AEY was awarded the contract in January 2007. Asked why it chose AEY, the Army Sustainment Command answered in writing: AEYs proposal represented the best value to the government.

EASTERN ARSENALS
Both the Army and AEY have treated the sources of the ammunition the company purchases as confidential matters, declining to say how and where the company obtained it, the prices paid or the quantities delivered.

But records provided by an official concerned about the companys performance, a whistle-blower in the Balkans and an arms-trafficking researchers in Europe, as well as interviews with several people who work in state arsenals in Europe, show that AEY shopped from stocks in the old Eastern bloc, including Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Montenegro, Romania and Slovakia.

Premier Assures Albanians for Probe into Gerdec Tragedy Five Months After Blasts We had a terrible tragedy. Every cell of this tragedy should be investigated and I am fully confident that such a thing would happen, said Berisha
TIRANA – Albanian…

In your inaugural speech you stated, „To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history.“

Based on your words, it seems you were speaking directly to those like Sali Berisha, Albania’s Prime Minister. Yet, in the first week of February, members of your administration, including Vice President Joseph Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as other members of your administration and Congress, met in Washington with Prime Minister Berisha and his travel companion, former Defense Minister Fatmir Mediu.

On the eve of your trip to Europe to attend G-20 and NATO meetings, I am writing to brief you about the Berisha regime, a “government” that, in my opinion, is little more than an international criminal conspiracy.

By way of background, I was a founder of the Albanian Relief Foundation and the National Albanian American Council, and I established the first lobbying office for Albanian Americans in Washington. I also served as a Director of the Kosova Relief Fund and the Albanian Heritage Foundation. My grandfather, my father (who emigrated from Albania as a young boy and served in the U.S. Army Air Corp during WWII) and my mother were all active in the affairs of the Albanian American community.

My efforts helped expose several incidents of impropriety by Albanian government officials including the AEY arms deal with the U.S. Department of Defense, which was reported on the front page of the March 27, 2008 edition of The New York Times, and is currently the subject of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. I was also a catalyst for the House Oversight Committee’s investigation of AEY. Kosta Trebicka, who was an Albanian businessman, was the AEY whistle-blower, and I worked with him to help shed light on this scandal. As such, Trebicka was a material witness to this effort to defraud DOD and American taxpayers. Unfortunately, last fall, Kosta was found dead on a remote back road in Albania in what was called a „car accident“ by the Berisha government. Because of the highly suspicious nature of his death and the fact that Kosta implicated Berisha and Mediu in the AEY deal, most Albanians believe he was murdered. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2UyfK6pN1I

Information regarding Berisha and Mediu that should be of concern to the U.S. government follows:

1. Several days after Fatmir Mediu met with officials of your administration, he was indicted by Albania’s prosecutor in conjunction with the March 15, 2008 explosion at the ammunition demilitarization facility located at Gerdec, Albania (there is reason to believe the Gerdec operation was initiated because of direct pressure from the U.S. government). The Gerdec tragedy resulted in 26 deaths, hundreds of injuries and thousands of damaged properties. The hazardous conditions at this plant were well known to Albanian government officials, including Berisha and Mediu, and U.S. Embassy officials in Tirana. As was well known in Albania and to State Department officials, at the time Mediu met with Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Clinton, he was under investigation for Gerdec (despite Berisha’s ongoing attempts to undermine the Albanian prosecutor’s investigation). Several of Mediu’s associates were previously indicted for negligence and mass murder in conjunction with Gerdec. The news of the charges against Mediu appears in this International Herald Tribune report: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2009/02/11/europe/EU-Albania-Blast-Probe.php . Prior to the Berisha/Mediu visit to Washington, I informed American officials via email about their intentions to use the visit to their advantage. Those officials were fully aware that Mediu presided over Albania’s Ministry of Defense at the time of the AEY scandal as well as the persistent allegations about Mediu’s corrupt practices.

2. A report issued by The Economist in January called Albania a „hybrid democracy“ describing it as a hybrid between democracy and totalitarianism. The report ranked Albania as the least democratic country in the Balkans and stated, „the spread of democracy has come to a halt“ in Albania. http://www.albanianeconomy.com/news/2009/01/19/albania-a-hybrid-democracy-the-economist/

3. In a recent series of condemnations of Berisha, The International Press Institute and Transparency International joined the chorus of Reporters Without Borders and the Committee for the Protection of Journalists in criticizing Sali Berisha for his latest blatant effort to block free speech. In this episode Berisha sent state police to close the office of the Albanian newspaper TEMA for criticizing his government.

As anyone familiar with Albania knows, this is far from the first time Berisha has used anti-democratic, repressive tactics. He used the tax authorities to bully Top Channel TV into silence. And after The New York Times interviewed Fatmir Mediu about the AEY deal, Mediu sent goons to confiscate the video tapes and equipment that were used for the interview. This can be confirmed with The Times journalist who conducted the interview. But the ultimate act of blocking free speech occurred last September when Kosta Trebicka, the AEY whistle-blower, was silenced forever when he was killed in the „car accident“ in Albania.

4. The old, corroding, Chinese ammunition AEY bought from the Albanian government

(via Cyprus-based Evdin, a company controlled by the notorious and watch-listed Swiss arms dealer Henry Thomet), for sale to the U.S. Department of Defense, was repackaged by AEY in Albania in order to remove the Chinese markings. The ammunition was then shipped to Afghanistan where defective munitions placed – and continue to place – American troops at risk in Afghanistan. All of this was paid for by American taxpayers, and this serves as a perfect example of the type of government waste you have promised to combat. Milhal Deligjoji is an Albanian „businessman“ who was awarded the contract (by Berisha and Mediu) to repackage the ammunition. This was done during the period Marcie Ries served as U.S. Ambassador to Albania (currently serving as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State), but the shipments continued when John Withers assumed the position of Ambassador. You should be aware that Ms. Ries attended several of the meetings held by Berisha and Mediu when they visited Washington, and she was fully aware of all of the allegations contained herein. Deligjorji was also the owner of Albademil, the company that was awarded the contract to demilitarize the ammunition at the Gerdec plant that exploded. Deligjorji, who was a known thug around Tirana, was also known to keep close company with Shkelzen Berisha, the son of Sali Berisha. As was suggested by AEY’s president during a recorded telephone conversation (DOJ and House Oversight are in possession of the recordings, Shkelzen Berisha has been alleged to have participated in the AEY deal. Deligjorji’s attorney was Argita Berisha Maltezi, who incorporated Albademil for Deligjorji and is Sali Berisha’s daughter. Deligjorji is now in jail on charges of negligence and mass murder in conjunction with the Gerdec explosion

5. According to news reports in Albania, Fatmir Mediu was also indicted on criminal charges in Italy along with Gazmend Mahmutaj, a known Albanian trafficker and gangster. Mediu was acquitted – apparently, he cut some form of deal – but Mahmutaj was serving time in an Italian prison as of last year. Mediu is Chairman of the Republican Party of Albania, part of Berisha’s coalition government. The head of one of the Republican Party’s local chapters in Albania is Kassem Mahmutaj, the brother of Gazmend. Kassem Mahumutaj was appointed director of Albania’s largest munitions depot (the site of another recent explosion that resulted in one death) by Fatmir Mediu, and this depot is alleged to have been one of the sources of ammunition for the AEY deal.